Successful Debt Collection Strategies: Better Something Than Nothing...

by Jemmer Pabllo
(San Jose, CA, USA)

I worked in a publishing company and one of my functions was to assist the accounting department to collect old debts from clients who had advertised in our magazine and was never able to pay.

Most of them were hard to contact, especially those that had changed employees who were responsible in signing the ads. Some were already old in the books, like five years ago and were considered bad debts already.

One of the debt collection strategies I suggested and was followed through by the accounting department was to collect even half of what they owed if it was in cash, and if they could barter with their services or products if the company is still existing.

It took a while to collect but writing off their debts with discounts or barters was a good idea and we were able to collect almost half of the thousands of dollars our clients owed to us if we did not do something about it.